Is the Highway Code out of date?

I have fallen back into love with Loretta, my racing bike. It's been a difficult few months with time required for family, home and business matters that may otherwise have been allocated for two wheel leisure and pleasure. I have not been fully detached from the sport of cycling having hugged the same tree for 16 hours over 2 days whilst marshalling at the mountain bike world cup in Dalby Forest and helping out by driving officials at the East Yorkshire Classic. My own cycling history only really started seriously in 1979 but I have seen wonderful photographs of the halcyon days of cycling in the inter war and immediate post war periods with hordes of tourers engaged in mass jaunts out to the seaside, beauty spots or a well frequented cafe. Confronting a motor vehicle or a traffic signal will have been a rarity. On this theme I have compiled a short list of modern day hazards for the serious, leisure and occasional cyclist. It is necessary to make full allowance for the factors of traffic, daft cycle lanes, parked and parking vehicles, loose dogs, stupid pedestrians, gals on hosses, litter, garden debris fallen from trailers, drinks cans, broken glass, potholes, displaced drain grates, grooves in the tarmac from trailing exhaust pipes, bits of rubber from lorry tyres, sleeping drunks, chewing gum, puddles deeper than they appear, anything liquid, passengers with water pistols or spraying other dubious fluids, drunken or drug crazed motorists, audi and bmw owners, inattentive police and emergency vehicles, white vans, drivers using the phone whilst on the move, ugly children waving , cars with illegal tinted glass (usually on account of same ugly children), old men on electric bikes, youffs on mopeds, large bottomed ladies on small saddles, fat men on lightweight frames, crocodiles of children and large very pedestrian families, sightseers and tourists, people messing with pelican crossings, traffic light and junction jumpers, piles of chippings, freshly melted tar, newly painted road markings, roadworks, possessed traffic cones, hedge trimmings swept into the gutter by lazy gardeners, Council grass cutting equipment driven as though a go-kart, machines vacuuming out gullies, abusive fellow road users, parents with buggies, Lucy Atwell characters chasing a coloured balloon, adolescents throwing bricks off overhead bridges, swarms of flies, a wasp in between hair and helmet, agricultural odours, people looking for the farmers market, newspaper boys and girls on their little brothers bike, suspicious scruffy looking groups of young men on suspiciously smart and expensive bikes, women putting on make-up whilst mobile, unannounced three point or U turns, those relying on the 1974 version of the Readers Digest Book of the Road, members of the National Trust in a Conservation Area, roadside and pavement vendors, garage sale signs, yellow planning notices on lampposts, classic car drivers looking for their Werthers Originals in the glovebox. You will be faced with one or more of the above at least every 100 metres. Still, there is no better feeling of freedom than when on your bike with not a care in the world.